You are welcome to use parts of this sermon, but if you do, please attribute them properly!
They
did not have paper money back in those days – and they certainly did not have
anything like electronic giving where your offering was automatically deducted
from your bank account. It was cold,
hard coin. That was it.
As
a result, you could hear the money as it was dropped into any one of the
thirteen brass receptacles that lined the wall of the Court of the Women, which
was situated at the entrance of the Temple in Jerusalem. These coin boxes were shaped somewhat like
cornucopias (ironically that great symbol of Thanksgiving gratitude and
generosity) with a big bell opening pointing upwards at the top.
Each
receptacle represented a different line item in the Temple’s budget. Some were designated to defray the expenses
of running the Temple (the operating budget or general fund) while others
represented the mission portion and were intended to help the poor.
Think
of these brass boxes as a sensory budget:
Ah, the smell of money piling up inside!
And, of course, there was the sight of people day in and day out making
their way to the brass boxes –
as well as the sound of cold hard cash
jingling and clanking as it bounced off the brass and made its way to the
bottom of the receptacle. Lots of
coinage – or a really big offering - made lots of noise; a little coinage made
barely any sound at all.
And
the Sadducees – there were only 300 in all of Israel – the Sadducees who were
positioned at the very pinnacle of the Jewish religious hierarchy – the
Sadducees literally sat for hours on end in the Court of the Women, watching
people give their offerings to God. They
knew exactly who gave what.
This
is the scene that Jesus inserted himself into in our Scripture reading
today: So – as we enter the scene,
imagine the Sadducees sitting on one side of the Court. Their stony,
intimidating faces and frigid stares characterize them. There they are, shaking their heads at the
stooped over widow who dropped her two small coins into the nearest box and
scuttled away. See them rolling their
eyes in plain disgust at the near silence of her offering. Look at them glancing down the line of
waiting pilgrims to see if a better prospect might be coming next.
And
continue to imagine Jesus sitting on the other side. Hear his usual running commentary on events,
a commentary designed to infuriate the Temple hotshots. First, he gave his unsolicited two-cents
(no pun intended) on the Sadducees:
“Watch out for the religion scholars. They love to walk around in
academic gowns, preening in the radiance of public flattery, basking in
prominent positions. And all the time they are exploiting the weak and
helpless. The longer their prayers, the worse they get.” Ah, Jesus – you
certainly know how to make friends in high places – not!
Then
he commented on the nameless widow: “The
truth is that this poor widow gave more to the collection than all the others
put together. All the others gave what they’ll never miss; she gave
extravagantly what she couldn’t afford—she gave her all.”
And
that believe it or not, is the end of the passage. What was the Gospel writer thinking, throwing
us into the midst of this mind-boggling scene of budgets and money and
collections? And then it is over – just
like that – and what is worse, Jesus never tells us what we are supposed to do
with it.
“Oh,
no!” You may be thinking. “Here we go again. The preacher is going to talk about money –
and stewardship – and pledges. She is
going to try to make us feel guilty for not being more like the widow when we
filled out those pledge cards last week.
We had better steel ourselves.”
However, you know, if preachers talked about
money as much as Jesus talked about money, about half the sermons you heard
would be about cold, hard cash. So –
consider yourselves lucky that I am not going to talk about money. I am going to talk about Halloween candy
instead.
Methodist
pastor and seminary professor Alyce McKenzie shared this wonderful little
personal Halloween confession on her blog.
It is a confession that, I am willing to bet, most of us, if we were
honest, would confess as well:
She
writes: “I had bought several bags
labeled "Demon Treats," collections of 130 snack-size candy handouts:
Reese's Peanut Butter Cups, Reese's Pieces, Kit Kats, and Milk Duds. I also bought a bag of miniature Almond Joy
bars, the kind with coconut and almonds covered in milk chocolate. Overbuying the candy is an annual
pattern for me.”
She
goes to say that she dressed as a witch on Halloween night and, in between
trick or treaters, posted a Facebook picture of herself in her witch’s hat with
the caption, “’Glinda the Good Witch hands out Kit Kats and Whoppers - and
saves the Almond Joy bars for herself." (Personally, I can relate to
that. Almond Joys are my favorite
too.). Anyway, sixty-five people liked
the post, (she claims) with eighteen comments.
One
"friend" commented: "Glinda was nobody's fool."
Another
recounted he used to dump his kids' booty and tell them all the stuff they
wouldn't like, and then made that his stash.
Yet
another suggested we should only buy what we like, considerably overestimate
the number of trick-or-treaters we expect, and hoard our favorites.
Yet
another commented: "Fun size is only fun if you eat more than one."
McKenzie
continues: “Their comments make it clear that we all have our own ways of
keeping a little something back for ourselves. We don't want to give it all
away. We can't all be like this noble widow giving away her last bit of cash
with nothing left in her ATM. She's all in. And if I'm honest with myself, I
admit that, with regard to my discipleship, I'm almost all in.”
It
may come as a surprise to you, but, contrary to many a preacher’s
interpretation, I do not think that this passage about the widow’s offering is about
funding mission projects for the poor – though doing so should be an important
aspect of any church – or personal - budget.
I also do not think that this passage is about stewardship and how much
you pledge – though taking a careful look at not so much the raw dollars you
give but rather at the percentage of your income you choose to designate as
your token of gratitude to God is certainly a worthwhile pursuit, one that
often leads to surprising insights and implications.
You
see, because we find this Story of the Widow’s Offering in the Gospel of Mark,
we must presume that it is about discipleship because discipleship – what it
means to be a follower of Jesus – is the primary focus of this particular
Gospel.
This
is not a story about how much we give.
It is a story about commitment.
It is a story that raises the question:
Are we all in? Or, can we at
least be more in than we have been in the past?
It is the same question that Jesus asked those fishermen he recruited
way back when. “Come, and follow me –
can’t tell you where, can’t tell you for how long, but if you’re coming, you gotta
at least try to be all in.”
In
a way, the widow foreshadowed Jesus’ own answer to that nagging question - and
we all know what his answer was. As one
blogger I read this week wrote, “He didn’t say, ‘I love the world, but only up
to a point. How about 50%?’ No, he stretched out his arms and gave it
all.” He was all in, and he is our model.
So
- this little story is not a condemnation of your level of giving. Nor is it a guilt-inducing vignette designed
to make you cough up more. If that is
how I chose to interpret it, I would be little better than the Sadducees giving
everyone who approached those thirteen brass receptacles in the Temple the hairy
eyeball, willing them to dig deeper into their pockets.
No – this
story is not about money and funding church budgets. This story is an invitation – an invitation
to embody in our own lives what the Kingdom of God is all about. It is an
invitation to consider that maybe our cultural mores that calculate wealth by
the possessions we own is just plain wrong.
This story is an invitation to consider what Mother Theresa once
said: “If you give what you do not need,
it isn't giving." And what C.S. Lewis once wrote, "I do not believe
one can settle how much we ought to give. I am afraid the only safe rule is to
give more than we can spare." This story is an invitation to be “all in.”
This story is
an invitation to experience grace, which is that freedom, as Reformed pastor
Scott Hoezee wrote, “to be who we have become as new creatures in Christ. We
use our gifts and give of ourselves not because of some stern external
obligation or pressure or because we’ve been made to feel guilty as we are
manipulated by the church. Instead (if we so choose) we are free to be who we
are, free to let the Spirit move us along in ministry.”
This little
story about the widow and her meager – though glorious – offering is not about
money. It is about commitment, about
being all in. It is about being really
and truly spiritually alive, something that is not possible without making a
sacrifice as the widow did. It is a story about opening up, letting go, watching our
coins disappear down the brass receptacle, clattering and jingling, and all the
while trusting that we will still have enough. Trusting?
Why? Because somewhere along the
way we decided to be a Christian, to make a commitment to be all in.
Widow
A word to strike
fear
Into the heart of
every Jewish woman
Widow
A hard word synonym
for defenseless
Poor. Alone.
Nothing.
For in your world
you were nothing without a man
Only father,
husband, brother or son
Gave you validation
For you, the fear
has come true and here you are
Widowed,
One of the poor
ones
Life hanging by a
slender thread
A tissue-thin
connection
Between you and
hunger
Between life and
death
Poor widow
Nothing on which to
come and go
Just two small
coins in your hand
Enough for the next
meal, perhaps
But you
Make your way
bravely to the Temple treasury
Ringing with the
noise of many coins
Thrown
ostentatiously into brass trumpets.
Quietly you slip
between the crowd
And drop in
Your offering.
Did you wonder
whether anyone would notice?
Whether your two
small coins would make any difference?
Someone did see
One who rated your
two coins more highly
Than all the
clattering money thrown in that day by scribes
Who make stripping
widow's assets an occupation.
And down the years
Your act tugs at
our heartstrings
And makes our
overloaded purses
Heavy with shame
And any time we
offer something small
We commemorate your
gift as we say
"It's just a
widow's mite."
Thank you, widow
woman
For daring to come
out of the obscurity
Of your status-less
life
Refusing to let
poverty restrict you
Refusing to be a
nobody
Daring to be one
Who gave the most
priceless gift of all
All she had.
As Anglican
priest Francis Wade wrote, “ It's not about giving, not about making a
gesture. It's about the way we live, and the key word is generosity.”
by Rev. Nancy Foran, Raymond Village Community Church U.C.C., Raymond, Maine
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